Tuesday, 2 April 2013

Marci Boudreaux...The Messenger!

Marci is a great pal and one of my go-to authors. I'm very excited about her newest offering, The Messenger, and was so pleased she decided to share a snippet with us today. With no further ado, I will hand the mike over to Marci!

I wrote The
Messenger just over ten years ago. I was still riding high on winning third
place for unpublished manuscript in a Texas Writers’ League contest.
Unfortunately, the world didn’t love the book as much as I did. After numerous
rejections, I put it on the shelf and only recently pulled it off to give it
another go.

It needed lots of
work. Let me say that again: It needed A
LOT of work!!Head hopping, showing not
telling, repetitive writing…just to name a few.

But I was
determined, so I cleaned it up, offered it up and it was accepted by Secret
Cravings Publishing. I knew it still needed more polishing and scrubbing, so I
turned to some great author friends—Vonnie Hughes, Parker Kincade, and Sloane
Taylor all had a peek at it—to help me get my head on straight and attack this
as an editor instead of a sentimental writer. I also had two nurses take a look
just to make sure the medical records bit was in line with what goes on inside
a hospital today.

With their help I
was able to rework this story that I’ve loved for so long into something that I
hope you will love too!

Blurb:

Evelyn Thomas is tired of being treated like a
little girl playing dress-up. Just because she is working at her father’s
newspaper doesn’t mean she isn’t a good journalist. All she needs is a chance
to prove it.

Unfortunately for seasoned reporter Wes Reilly,
that chance turns out to be the exact same story he’s working on.

When the journalists get separate leads on the
same insurance scam, they butt heads over who gets to expose it. However, when
Eve’s source ends up in ICU she has no choice but to turn to Wes for help.

Every step they take brings them closer towards
the truth and each other. But the path to vindication is filled with danger and
leaves Wes and Eve struggling to get out of sticky situations and fighting for
their lives.

Excerpt:

Eve
ran her hand along one of the many rows and skimmed the file tags until she got
close to the numerical prefix she was looking for. She pushed the files as far
apart as the overstuffed shelf allowed and tilted her head down to get a closer
look.She went over each name, not
finding any files which corresponded with names on the list Jerry had given
her.

This
was impossible, like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. She pulled a
piece of paper from her shirt pocket to verify the spelling of the name before
she pushed the folders apart again in case she had missed what she was looking
for the first time.

Suddenly
a hand roughly grabbed her shoulder. She spun around, her heart racing and her
lungs tight with the gulp of air she had involuntarily inhaled. As soon as she met
the angry gaze of the man who had startled her, she let her breath out with a
rush and sank against the wall of folders.

Wes
pressed his lips together and flexed his jaw muscles as he stared at her. “What
are you doing here?”

She
looked at the white coat he was wearing with a badge which identified him as
Dr. Henderson. “What are you doing here?”

Wes
leaned down to get eye-to-eye with her. “Answer me, Thomas.”

“I’m
following a lead.”

“What
lead?”

“I
don’t have to share my stories with you.”

“Your
story?”

“Yes.”

He
snorted as he leaned back. “Exactly what story would that be? How to properly
file medical records?”

She
felt the sting of his words go straight to her heart. Defiance set in and she
stood a little straighter. “Insurance fraud.”

Wes
stared at her for several seconds. He may have been trying to intimidate her,
but his glare had nothing on her father’s. She simply cocked her brow in
return.

“That’s
my story,” he said.

Eve
shook her head. “No. I got this tip on my own, Reilly, and if you think you’re
going to steal it away from me—”

“Steal
it away from you? I’d like to know where you got your tip ’cause I’ve been on
this story since last week. You are so unbelievably—”

Eve
raised her brows when he stopped mid-sentence and turned his head away. “I’m so
unbelievably what?”

“Shut
up,” he breathed. Her mouth opened and Wes put his hand over her lips. “Hush.”

Eve
gasped when she was quiet long enough to hear footsteps. She grabbed his wrist
and pulled his hand away. “What do we do?”

Marci
Boudreaux lives with her husband, two children, and their numerous pets. She is
a freelance writer and video producer for a variety of local
monthly magazines as well as a content editor for several small publishing
houses.

Romance
is her preferred reading and writing genre because nothing feels better than
falling in love with someone new and her husband doesn’t like when she does
that in real life.

Marci
is currently working on her Masters in Publishing and has plans to eventually
take over the world.